


Carve a Space for Your Body

by alice_pike



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 11:38:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19722928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alice_pike/pseuds/alice_pike
Summary: He took you both out here so you'd have something to hold on to when you went back, so you'd have a lifeline and he'd have an anchor when he left you for the stars.Keith's love letter to the desert.  (And to Shiro.  And to the stars.)





	Carve a Space for Your Body

**Author's Note:**

> It's tagged Keith/Shiro but it's never explicitly mutual (even though it is): This is Keith through pre-canon/season one. Canon compliant, Adam is mentioned off-handedly, once. 
> 
> Title is from the song 'Monument' by Royksopp feat. Robyn, which I listened to nonstop while writing this, along with 'The Maze' by Manchester Orchestra. This fic has two moods, and those are it.

The sky is red when you walk out of the Garrison the morning after your fight with Iverson, the rising sun slanting in your eyes and your dismissal papers tight in your fist, and you think you've never been happy inside those walls, anyway, not without _him_.

You walk away from the Garrison without a glance, without a thought, and the sun is warm on your skin. 

The desert is immense and it makes you feel small, when you are miles away from the nearest person, the nearest cadet, the nearest instructor who looks at you like your borrowed time has finally run out and they will finally be rid of you, because without Shiro you are nothing, and a simulator score means nothing when the best pilot in the Garrison and his crew are dead. It makes you feel small, and unimportant, and for once that is a comfort: That you can exist without their prying eyes and the expectations you could never live up to, that you can be free here—free to grieve and to rage and to lose yourself, free to become something else. 

Because Shiro is gone, and you've never experienced a loss like this, not with a mother you don't remember and a father who was barely there, not with teachers for whom your potential was not worth your problems, not with classmates, not with _anyone_. Shiro spent so much time knocking down your walls and now you are bare and defenseless; you let him in and now he's gone and you're emptier than you ever were for his absence. You don't want to believe he's dead, but even if he's not, he's beyond your reach and no one is going after him and so he's as good as dead, anyway. And if he's dead, what's the point? You lived with the person you were before, and you'll live with whoever you'll be later; it won't be the person he knew you could be, the person you thought you could become, but what does it matter, if he's dead?

The desert feels like a church, like a temple, like a place where you could find yourself outside of whatever it is Shiro built for you.

You never thought you'd be back here, never thought you'd live here again; but you've got a knife at the bottom of your bag and a picture of your father along with it and in the picture he's _here_ , in the desert, and you don't remember much of living here with him but something in you must recognize it, the heat and the dust and the expanse of the sky, something in you rising to the surface like the sun over the dunes and burning just as bright. There's a piece of you to be found here, and something else, too, something you can't name, an awareness that takes root and spreads like an itch just under your skin. 

You never thought you'd live here again, but you're here anyway because the bank took your father's house but didn't know about the shack three miles west of it (the shack he built for your mother so she could watch the skies, so she could protect the Lion from the empire her people had built, because he had wanted to help but could only do so much against an enemy they'd had no hope of fighting) and it wasn't until you'd left the orphanage, until you walked out of the Garrison and realized that neither of those places were ever your _home_ , did you turn your speeder to the desert, to a place you'd only been to once before, a place you'd brought Shiro when you were still in school and he'd asked about your parents, about the blank space in your file, and you didn't know what to tell him because you'd had nothing to tell: This wasn't your home and it never would be, because only once he was gone did you realize that your home had become wherever Shiro was, and now they were both gone for good. 

So you lose yourself, because you have nowhere else to go, because you're still reeling from a loss you never could've imagined, and you're afraid that if you stay still then it'll catch up to you—everything you're trying to leave behind, the ghost of everything that's left you—and out here you can run for miles, for days, and nothing else matters but the stars over your head and the dust under your feet and that itch, that itch under your skin that you just can't help but want to scratch.

After weeks of letting time slip past you in the shack, a roiling in your stomach and a gaping hole in your chest that you still can't look at too closely, Shiro's promise to you echoing empty in your head, you start to feel the air grow heavy. It's a small thing at first—a pressing on your skin as the sun rises and sets, a weight to the wind that blows through the canyons in the late afternoon, pinpricks of pressure under the open night sky as if the stars themselves are weighing you down—but it grows as time passes until you can barely escape it, until you feel it at all hours of the day and even in your sleep; it's _everywhere_ , seeping into everything, pressing on you until it feels like a physical thing, a presence you can't deny or escape. It starts to suffocate you, pulls you out of the shack and into the open expanses of the desert just so you can _breathe_. 

It lures you out of your misery, forces you into spaces with light and dry heat and desert air, and it burrows under your skin, seeps into your veins, vibrates in your bones. You feel alive, more alive than you've felt in months, since before he died, since before he _left_ , and it is a reprieve: The sun traverses the sky and the stars wheel overhead, and here in the open you begin to feel like you have a _purpose_. It isn't something you understand, something you could explain, but the weight in the air begins to settle, steady on your shoulders like a mantle and clinging to you like a second skin and it feels…

It _feels_ …

It's not long until you go looking for the source of it, because it feels _right_ , because you can't _not_ , drawn to this energy you can't explain but can feel so strongly; and you don't know that your mother did the same, that you are following in footsteps so much bigger than your own.

It keeps you focused, and it gives you something to _do_ —something you're too lost at the time to appreciate, a blessing you can't see so deep in your grief, but it keeps you going. You wake up as the sun rises, and you wake up, and you wake up, and you wake up; and it gets easier, as time passes, as you get closer to the source, as months slip by and the ache inside of you that is Shiro's absence doesn't shrink but dulls, a wound you'd never thought would heal slowly stitching itself back together. It's not as heavy—not out here—and you spend weeks camped out in the caves, tracing the symbols you find there with steady hands and dreaming about the lion they depict, dreaming about space and seeing the stars even with your waking eyes, meteors flashing in the corners of your vision, and there is, at the heart of it all, a rumbling anticipation you can feel in your bones and deep in the rocks beneath your feet. 

And then it all starts to whisper of a change: A shift in the winds that make them grate against your skin, the stars suddenly a map you don't recognize and can't read, your dreams a whirring mess of symbols and shapes that all seem to suggest: _Something is coming_. And as you prepare yourself the best you can, anticipation sparking along your nerves, making what sense you can of your dreams, you start to feel the weight of something so much heavier than the air or the sky or the stars pressing down—not just on you, or the desert, or even the planet—but on the universe itself.

You look up. You keep looking up. You plan. And you wait.

Seeing Shiro is a shock like you've never had, and it freezes you for a moment longer than you can afford, sizing up the room and what you're up against to get back out. Your charges will take next to no time at all to investigate, you know this, the patrols will back soon and you have to _move_ ; but seeing Shiro is like a shot of ice water through your veins, and you can't help the sick sweep of vertigo deep in your gut, because this was the last thing you expected. 

You never even let yourself _hope_ for this.

But you tamp it down; you move, because you have to, and you cut off the manic laugh that's building somewhere in your chest because this isn't even the first time Shiro's done this. Because he was the last person you had expected to show up all those years ago, standing tall in front of the bars of your cell in the detention center, his keys in his hand and a look on his face you couldn't decipher just then, a look you came to realize from the moment he handed you a card with a Garrison address on it until the day he left for Kerberos was a challenge, and one that you didn't always rise to; he was the last person you had expected to pick you up from the orphanage, driving you down the dusty desert roads to the Garrison like he owed you a favor; he was the last person you had expected in so many ways, and he proved himself over and over—is still proving himself now. 

Seeing Shiro is almost too much for you to process, because the clock is ticking and you were expecting a lot of things, things you _couldn't_ expect, but Shiro back from the dead was still not one of them.

You take down the officers and the medics around Shiro's gurney without breaking a sweat, like you knew you would: You've known for most of your life that there wasn't a fight you couldn't win, because you may not have grown up on the streets but most times the orphanage wasn't exactly much better, and you learned to fight by doing it, naturally inclined even untrained, as gifted at fighting as you were at flying. You clear the room in an instant, without thought, and Shiro is real under your hands, breathing shallow and steady, and his weight feels like nothing as you lift him to his feet. 

You vaguely recognize the three other cadets that run into the tent as you make your way out, but you don't have time for their chatter, for their inane questioning; you don't have the time or the space to wonder about why or how they're here—it's one more anomaly in a night of them—and you can't think about it because Shiro is leaning hard against your side and he is _here_ and he is _alive_ and you need to be, too. You need to get out of here and you need to bring him back and you've never cliff jumped with four extra people on your speeder but it's now or never, and maybe it's the adrenaline, maybe it's sheer desperation that makes it as flawless as ever, as easy as breathing, but you're speeding back over the dusty desert floor with the dawn at your back like your whole life hasn't just shifted, like things could ever be the same. 

The others are still waiting in darkness by the bike after you haul Shiro into the shack, lay him down as gently as you can on your couch that's seen better days, talking quietly amongst themselves. Introductions are awkward this late in the game, but you get them done and offer your floor for them to sleep on, throw yourself down with them, and you're all tired enough that you drop off pretty much immediately. You sleep closest to Shiro, and you barely sleep at all, despite your exhaustion, because you can hear Shiro's breaths, swear you can hear the beating of his heart, the steady passage of blood through his veins. You know that he's sleeping off whatever drugs they gave him, but you need to be here if he wakes; you need to be here, because you can't possibly be anywhere else.

The sun rises that morning as red as blood, as red as you've ever seen it, and Shiro wakes up in the shack and his first gasping breath feels like your own, like you're finally free to exhale, like you've been holding your breath since the Kerberos launch and just now feeling how your lungs have burned. You know the moment he sees you: His eyes are wide and wild with panic, taking in surroundings he doesn't recognize, taking stock of where is and probably how much strength he has to fight his way out; but you see the moment when his eyes land on you, the gasp of surprise, the almost imperceptible stilling of his body, the disbelief written clear as day across his face. 

"Keith?" he asks, nearly a whisper, nearly a croak, and already you're reaching for him, you're reaching for him and tears are clouding your vision and your fingers tangle in his shirt, holding tight and holding tight and if you let go you will be lost, and you can't lose yourself again, you _can't_. 

"Keith," he says again, and his voice is stronger this time, and you blink away the tears and he is still there, still solid beneath your hands and he's reaching for you, too; he's sitting up and pulling you in and you crash against his chest, holding him tight, because he is here and he is safe and you never thought this moment would be real. You don't know what he's been through, can't imagine what he's feeling, what he's lost; but you offer yourself to him as clearly as you can, tell him with your silence and your patience and your steady presence that you're _here,_ that he hasn't and won't ever lose you. He doesn't know what you've been through either, you think, because you are not the same kid he left at the Garrison and you are not the man he wanted you to become, but there's time now, you think, time now to learn each other again, time for you to burrow into him and rebuild the home you thought you'd lost. 

He wakes up in the shack and you tell him, "Shiro, it's okay, you're home," but you wonder exactly what home you're referring to, because home is not a _planet_ , it is sometimes not even a place, and you can't help but wonder if maybe Shiro's home is a person, too, can't help but _hope_ that he will rebuild inside of you, as well.

The sun's red haze starts to burn off into a clear blue sky and he closes his eyes against the brightness of it, the tranquilizer still sluggish in his veins. You pin up the shades over the window and tell him to sleep, tell him you'll be here, tell him you're not letting him go.

The others have slept through this and you're grateful, but your exhaustion overwhelms you now, now that you know Shiro is _safe_ , and here, with you. You fall asleep easily, still at Shiro's feet, and it is hours into the morning before any of you wake, a heaviness to the dust motes that swirl through the shack like you haven't felt since before you went looking, like a blanket over everything inside, and there is a light in Lance's eyes when he wakes that you don't recognize for what it is, and you don't think he knows is there. 

You give the others what food you have, not much and nothing good, whatever you could get from Plaht City that you could take with you to the caves, and they talk outside for an hour or two while you keep vigil over Shiro, but there's no decisions to be made, nothing to be done, since they can't go back to the Garrison (a suggestion given and easily dismissed, despite some reservations) and you won't do anything until Shiro wakes up, so a few hours after sunset you're all on the floor again, surprisingly tired despite the short day, the desert air settling around you like a thing alive.

You jerk awake to soft red light and a tangle of limbs and a glaringly empty couch above you and you fight down the immediate panic that rises at the sight. You jump to your feet but it is only a moment until you find him, silhouetted against the sky on the hill just outside, and your breath returns to your lungs in a rush as you go to him, drawn to him, always. 

He's wearing the clothes you left out for him, the clothes that never fit you that you know were your father's, left in a trunk in a corner of the shack, like maybe he was going to come back for them but never did, and you think that maybe it should be a painful memory, a painful thought, but Shiro looks spades better than he did last night and sometimes you can't even remember what your father looked like much less the clothes he used to wear and you've not survived this long thinking about the past, anyway. The clothes fit him and you're happy that you can help, satisfied by any small thing you can offer. 

He can't tell you much about himself but you have news enough for now, and you're embarrassed at first when you reveal the board, sticky notes slapped haphazardly across it, hand-drawn pictures tacked up amongst the photos you've taken, colored yarn connecting the dots, and you know it looks crazy, looks like something out of an old detective movie, but you also know it's real, you know it's _out there_. Shiro doesn't doubt you (has never doubted you, and you're buoyed by this staying the same) and the others seem mostly thoughtful if overwhelmed and it's a small comfort, a small mercy, that they're actually going along with you on this. (Then again, you think, you all just learned that actual honest-to-god aliens are real, so maybe a prophetic energy in the desert isn't the hardest thing for them to swallow).

Hunk and Pidge spend that day and most of the night building their alien Geiger counter while you and Lance wait until well after lights-out and take your speeder back to the Garrison, while you sneak in and steal food and supplies and do your best to get out as fast as you can because these walls have always made you a little crazy and without Shiro as a buffer you can't stand them at all, but Lance is a good partner, stealthy and quick, and you're on your way back before dawn is even a thought in the sky. 

A few more hours of shut eye on the floor and you're all up and ready to go by midday, and as you trek through the desert, as they follow you around without a thought to the Garrison, to their classes, their responsibilities, without a thought to what's _behind_ , you think that maybe it should be strange—more strange—to be doing this with them because Shiro used to do this with you, and for a moment you can't reconcile how normal it feels, how much things stay the same.

Because Shiro used to do this with you—when you were both in the Garrison, before he left for Kerberos, before you washed out—when you got bored or when you started to itch for a fight, when you broke another one of his simulator scores and wanted something else, something _more_ , and Shiro pulled strings and cashed in favors and took you out here on his speeder and let you drive, let you take them out for hours with stolen snacks and nothing to do until class the next morning (classes that you often skipped, asleep on his and Adam's couch, content in a way you wouldn't be a few hours later), and his laugh was bright in your ear and his arms tight around your waist and you felt that maybe you could keep going a little longer—finish the semester, finish the year.

Shiro used to do this with you, take you out here so both of you could breathe, away from prying eyes and expectations, away from instructors and classmates alike, so you could chase the desert sands as free as you please and track the movements of the stars across a sky so black it felt like tar in your lungs. So you could watch him, in silence, the way he looked at the sky like he belonged there, like he was meant for so much more. So your eyes could trace the curve of his neck and the corner of his smile and you could feel the weight of his arm across your shoulders, warm and grounding, and so, so right. So you could see the way he'd look back at you, proud and fond and wanting so much that you'd find something you loved, that you'd realize you were meant for so much more than even him—the way he'd look at you like you were worth everything he'd given you, like he'd never be able to give you enough.

He took you both out here so you'd have something to hold on to when you went back, so you'd have a lifeline and he'd have an anchor when he left you for the stars. 

Hunk's machine whirs and crackles as you walk the now-familiar path to the caves, and all you can think is how badly you want a moment alone with Shiro, a moment more than you had that morning on the hill, because so much has happened and you haven't really _talked_ to him, not like you used to, like you only ever did when the two of you were alone. You're walking to the caves and it feels like you're barely holding on, like this place where you've spent so much of the last few months is somewhere you've never been, because now that Shiro is here you realize how much you don't know, how much there is lost between you; and you ache for that absence, you long for the tether that Shiro has always been, and you recognize anew how much it had kept you grounded, how much you've needed him.

How much you need him, now.

But it turns out that you don't get a chance, and won't have a chance for a while, because in what feels like minutes you're not just in space but also in battle and then you're on the other side of the universe, farther than you've ever imagined was possible and already wrapped up in a war, a war that has always been yours and that will soon become your own. Things are happening so fast—everything has happened so quickly since he crashed back into your life—and you don't have time to think, to process it all, and then Allura finds your lion and you're off again, risking everything for a fight you didn't ask for and don't know yet that you've always been a part of. But Shiro is by your side and he's _here_ , he's _with you_ , and you think you can deal with anything as long as you're doing it together.

And besides, you _want_ this, the same way you wanted the desert and the caves, the same way you've always wanted to fight your way out of your skin. 

So you board an alien ship with Shiro at your side and you know he's there for you, supporting you like he always has, and his faith in you feels like a candle, like a flame, lighting your way through a path neither of you could have predicted; and maybe he's never sent you off into anything this dangerous before, maybe he never really left you alone like this (except once, and then twice, but you stopping counting Kerberos a while ago) but his hand is steady on your shoulder like it always was and you don't doubt his easy confidence, his trust in you, and you haven't doubted his opinion of you since before you stopped doubting your own. He tells you that you'll be fine, and you believe him, because you have never done anything else and he has never led you astray.

So you circle the ship, his words ringing in your ears, and you find your lion—but you feel like maybe there's something else, too. You get lost in the markings on the walls, their purple glow familiar somehow, and it's the caves all over again except it's not, it's _different_ , but you know it all the same. It feels like maybe you've slipped into this skin a little too easily, something deep inside of you coming to the surface like space itself has awoken it, something that had been smothered by the desert heat; and you think for the first time about Shiro's arm, about Shiro's captivity, about how maybe he's not the only one with something alien inside of him—that maybe you and Shiro, here and now with accidental secrets between you, are more than what you seem. 

But you find your lion; you find your lion and then you're fighting to prove yourself worthy of her and the irony almost chokes you because suddenly you're just a kid again, back in the orphanage, back at school, when you'd care _so much_ about winning, because winning meant you were worth something, meant you had a right to take up what space you did, even if everyone in your life said otherwise. It meant your past didn't matter; it meant their words didn't hurt; it meant they were wrong about you, and you could prove it. Shiro knew this about you, the way he knew so much more than you ever told him, and he nurtured that pride but still tried to teach you that winning wasn't everything, that the only opinion that mattered was your own; and what would Shiro say if he could see you now, jettisoning yourself into space without a second thought after throwing yourself into a fight you knew you couldn't win?

(He would say, "I knew you could do it." He would say, "You've always been worth this.")

Because you're not just a kid, not anymore, and this fight won you your lion, gave you the best thing in your life since the Garrison sent their top recruiter to a nothing middle school in the middle of nowhere, where he found a nothing teenager with off-the-charts test scores and a disciplinary history to match and decided that yes, _him—you_ were the one he was going to vouch for, the one he didn't know then that he was going to save.

And he's saved you in so many since then. Without Shiro, not a soul left on Earth had cared if you lived or died, and when you were the most wrapped up in the desert sands and so humbled by a force of energy that felt, even then, _cosmic_ —that was when you felt _freed_ by it, the weight of expectations lifted from your shoulders even as the universe bent itself upon you; and suddenly you were able to live your life on your own terms, for yourself, allowed to try and become the man that Shiro always knew you could be, the man you wanted more than anything to become. 

He's still saving you now, like he always has, (like he always will), and you've fought enough battles together, been through enough together even before that, that your loyalty to him has never been in question, your devotion to him never been in doubt. But it's never been this literal before, and the stakes have never been so high: Before Voltron, before the Galra, you never needed each other like this; there was never anything this immense that you could do for him. You've been Voltron long enough now, been in each other's heads and hearts as much if not more than your own, that you attack Zarkon just to give him time and you only think to be surprised by it after the wormhole spits you out. Only after you wake up alone on a dusty planet, staring out from the crater of your crash site, do you really understand that you jumped into a fight with the longest odds you've ever seen with no thought to yourself at all, and in that moment you're back in the desert again being reckless with your life, back at the Garrison using your body as a shield for Shiro's reputation, and you realize that you're _not_ surprised by it, not even a little, because this is always what you would've done for him, these are the lengths you always would've went for him, these and more, _everything_ , and your life is nothing compared to his and you are nothing without him, and not a single goddamn thing on this godforsaken planet is going to keep you from him.

You've saved each other from too much already.

So you find him, like you always have, (like you always will), drawn to him inexorably, and you know he's hurt and you know that time's ticking down, and maybe on a good day four alien monsters wouldn't give you pause but this is Shiro's life, this is a risk you wouldn't dream of taking, and you turn to his lion because you don't know what else to do, there isn't _time_ , and you _can't lose him_ —

Piloting Black feels like both sacrilege and worship, and you know you're not worthy of it, know you haven't earned it and don't deserve it and, frankly, don't want it (which is, of course, part of the problem), but it feels like _him;_ it feels like him and so it feels like home, and Black wants to save him just as much as you do, so she lights up at your touch and responds to your thoughts as well as Red ever has, and you wonder—you can't help but wonder if maybe she recognizes you, too, if you are a part of Shiro in even a fraction of the way that Shiro is a part of you. 

(He is so much of what you are, he is _everything_ , and you don't know who you would be without him; that Keith is not someone you'd want to be, you know that. That Keith is too quick to anger and too slow to ask for help; that Keith deals with his problems by fighting them, and doesn't care if he wins; that Keith languishes—maybe in the orphanage, maybe alone in the desert, maybe even still in the Garrison. Maybe that Keith still finds the caves, still searches the stars, but that Keith does not live to see the sun rise soft red and gray behind Shiro's silhouette the day their lives change, and that Keith does not know what it means to belong to something, what it means to fight for something worth having, worth saving, what it means to be loved, and cared for. That Keith does not have Shiro, and that is a life that for that reason alone you do not want to live).

So you save him, and yourself in the process, but he's talking now like he's already dead (talking about more than just the wound slowly bleeding out through his fingers, you know this, you've never forgotten this, you've never _accepted this_ ) and you won't lose him, you can't even think about losing him and the idea that you could _lead Voltron_ is absurd—but you're talking, for the first time since he crashed back to Earth, and it's not much but it's enough for now. You're talking, and you're alone together for the first time since the night before he left, when he took you out into the desert one last time, a telescope tucked away in his pack so he could show you Kerberos, show you how to find him even after he was gone. You're alone together for the first time since that night, and you wonder if he's remembering how he had to drive back to the Garrison, how you looked to the edge of the galaxy and couldn't help but cry, and scream, and hate him a little bit for leaving, and how he let you do all of it, how he pulled you close when you'd exhausted yourself and promised you he'd come back, promised he'd never leave you, never give up on you, and how you said "Okay," and believed him, and climbed behind him on his speeder and didn't cry again until the ship was out of atmosphere and he was truly beyond your reach. You wonder if he's thinking about it now, if he's thought about it as much as you have since you broke him out of quarantine and your life fell to pieces at his feet, pieces that you've been slowly putting back together in a way you never could have imagined before he was gone, in a way you never could have imagined even after he came back.

The wind swallows your words like there's nothing more for you to say (and what could you say that he doesn't already know?) and the dust of this planet is not the rich ochre of the desert but it swirls at your feet and for a moment you are there, in the caves, below the dunes, laid bare under the dome of the sky, pinned beneath the stars. You don't realize how much you miss it, most days, when your time is spent in battle and you sleep odd hours in odd places around the castle, and sunlight of any kind is a here-and-gone thing. But some days you feel the loss of it strongly, keenly, and you ache to be in the desert, sand in your clothes and the wind in your hair and a blood-red light on your face, watching as darkness crept in from the corners and the sky turned navy and indigo and black, the stars winking to life above you. Some days you would give anything to see a sunrise, would take whole years off your life to watch sunlight spill slowly across outcroppings and fill up canyons to the brim until the sky was brilliant and blue and that soft spilling of morning light was like waking slowly from a dream, and your every breath felt like the first.

But now Shiro is here, beside you like you never thought he would be again, and you're not just watching the stars but among them, living in galaxies no telescope at the Garrison could see; and Shiro is still brighter than them all, still the center of your gravity as he's been since the beginning, and you only look away from him, the spell of the desert falling away, when the wormhole cracks open the sky above you, flashing like the meteors in your dreams. 

Time passes here, in the farthest reaches of space, and it doesn't feel to you like days, doesn't feel like your sleep is measured in any way that _counts_ , and the ambient light of the castle is lurid in a way that grates at your nerves and artificial in a way that makes your skin crawl sometimes, longing for the desert heat and the steady inevitability of a star now too many galaxies away to count. But there is still something to be found here, still a part of you lost to the stars: It is close now, within your reach, and it will take you back in a way you do not expect, tied as you are to the stars and the desert sands both. 

You are a maze, and you are realizing now what you have always known—that Shiro has always burned brighter and more blinding than any sunrise you have ever seen, and your path is laid out before you like an endless length of string.


End file.
